1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a percussion-instrument pickup suitable for a variety of percussion instruments, such as a drum and a cymbal, and an electric percussion instrument that incorporates the percussion-instrument pickup.
2. Description of the Related Art
The applicant has proposed an electric snare drum having a wire gauze as a drumhead and a loudspeaker device for the electric snare drum, as disclosed in the patent literature 1 (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-237877).
The previously proposed electric snare drum has a wire gauze as the drumhead, so that the drumhead produces no sound if it is hit actually. Therefore, the electric snare drum is suitable for practice. The electric snare drum, which actually produces no sound, has a vibration pickup. Users of the electric snare drum can hear the sounds converted from the electric signals picked up by the vibration pickup through headphones and thus can avoid annoying those around them. Therefore, the electric snare drum is suitable for practice. In addition, if the electric signals picked up by the vibration pickup are output as sounds by a laud-speaker device, the electric snare drum can be used for live stage performance.
In addition, the applicant has proposed a muffled cymbal composed of a metal plate having multiple pores that absorb the acoustic energy produced when it is hit, thereby achieving sound attenuation, and an electric cymbal that is formed by attaching a vibration pickup to the muffled cymbal and produces sound converted from the electric signals picked up by the vibration pickup, as disclosed in the Patent literature 2 (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-184459).
The previously proposed muffled cymbal produces a sound changing depending on the point of hitting, the strength of hitting, the kind of the stick and the like. In this regard, the muffled cymbal is equivalent to the acoustic cymbal. In addition, the muffled cymbal has the sound attenuation capability. Thus, the muffled cymbal has optimal characteristics as a cymbal used for practice.
The electric snare drum previously proposed has the vibration pickup attached to the body, and vibrations of the body are converted into electric signals, thereby producing drum-sound signals. If the drum-sound signals are reproduced as sound, the tone is significantly affected by the waveform of the resonance of the body and thus slightly differs from that of the sound of acoustic drums.
In addition, the electric cymbal previously proposed has the vibration pickup attached directly to the backside of the cup of a cymbal, which is located substantially at the center of the cymbal, and the vibration pickup converts the vibrations of the cup into electric signals.
Thus, the electric cymbal has a disadvantage that it produces a sound containing much of the sound of vibrations of the cup, and the vibration pickup does not detect the sound of the whole cymbal. Generally, cymbals can produce sounds rich in higher-frequency components or lower-frequency components depending on the diameter thereof. However, if the vibration pickup detects the vibrations of the cup, the sound reproduced from the detection signals does not depend on the diameter of the cymbal but is affected by the shape of the cup or the like.
Furthermore, the electric drum proposed in the patent literature 1, which has a wire gauze as the drumhead, has a disadvantage that the wire gauze is deformed, or caves in, if the drumhead is hit hard. In addition, since the wire gauze is composed of wires woven perpendicularly to each other, the wire gauze is highly resistant to tensile forces in directions of the wires but less resistant to tensile forces in oblique directions. Thus, the electric drum has another advantage that the drum-sound signals produced by the vibration pickup change depending on the relationship between the point of hitting and the position of the vibration pickup, thereby changing the strength or tone of the produced drum sound.